If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefoxas your Browser.0930-1500 KENYA TIMENormal Board - The Whole shebangPrompt Board Next day settlementExpert Board All you need re an Individual stock.

The voice, in contrast to Colorado’s metallic pidgin, is a melange ofrepartee, laughter, and song, with a “quality of purest, sweetestsadness”.“Somehow we are picking up signals from radio programmes of 40, 50, 60years ago.”

On the same day Donald Trump and Xi Jinping struck a trade war trucein Argentina, some 7,000 miles away Canadian authorities made anarrest that now threatens to make the U.S.-China conflict much worse.The U.S. is seeking the extradition of Wanzhou Meng, chief financialofficer of Huawei Technologies Co., after convincing Canada to arresther on Dec. 1. Canada confirmed she was in custody shortly after theGlobe and Mail reported she had been arrested in connection withviolating sanctions against Iran.China promptly reacted with outrage after the news broke, demandingthat both countries move to free Meng. Later, the foreign ministrysaid it was waiting for details on why she was arrested, and saidtrade talks should continue.It’s hard to overstate the significance of her arrest in Beijing: Mengis the daughter of the founder of Huawei, a national champion at theforefront of Xi’s efforts for China to be self-sufficient in strategictechnologies. While the U.S. routinely asks allies to extradite druglords, arms dealers and other criminals, arresting a major Chineseexecutive like this is rare -- if not unprecedented.“The timing and manner of this is shocking,” Andrew Gilholm, directorof North Asia analysis at Control Risks Group, said by phone. “It’snot often the phrase OMG appears in our internal email discussions. ”Either way, China is almost certain to view Meng’s arrest as a majorescalation in the trade war that will foment fears of a wider Cold Warbetween the world’s biggest economies.“It will definitely complicate the negotiations and they may believethis was done to increase the pressure during this 90-day period,”said Dennis Wilder, a former CIA China analyst and senior director forAsia at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush.“This is sending a signal that there is a new game,” Wilder said ofthe recent U.S. arrests. “They are trying to deter Chinese espionageand make it clear that there are real consequences.”“Their goal is to decouple with China,” said Wang Yong, a professor atthe School of International Studies at Peking University.“Negotiations are the wish of Trump and Wall Street.”

Dissent is measured and snuffed out very quickly in China. China hasunveiled a Digital Panopticon in Xinjiang where a combination of datafrom video surveillance, face and license plate recognition, mobiledevice locations, and official records to identify targets fordetention [CDT]. Xinjiang is surely a Precursor for how the CCCP willmanage dissent. The actions in Xinjiang are part of the regionalauthorities’ ongoing “Strike-Hard” campaign, and of President Xi’s“stability maintenance” and “enduring peace” drive in the region.

It was an in an article on Dec 30th 2016 that I wrote that myconviction Trade for 2017 was 1. Long BITCOIN. BITCOIN was trading atlevels around $1,000.00 going into 2017. My Thesis was that BITCOINand the entire crypto-currency World which had been very esoteric andsomething of a closed World of ''bug-eyed'' Gamers and the Off-GridFolks who wanted throw the Yoke of Government off their backs, would''mainstream'' And it ''mainstreamed'' beyond my wildest dreamsthrough 2017. By November 2017 BITCOIN was knocking on the door of$10,0000.00 and on the 27th November 2017, I wrote an articlecaptioned Bitcoin "Wow! What a Ride!" and advised booking the profitson the Trade. A more than 9.7x Price Inflation was gettinguncomfortably close to outpacing the Tulip Mania [see Graph] BITCOIN'sparabolic price rally had spawned thousands of other crypto currencieswhich were sold on the same grounds as the greatest South Sea Bubbleprospectus: “For carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, butnobody to know what it is.”

The Price inflated further reaching a high of $19,763.00 on 18 dec2017. By the first of January this year we had retreated to$13,428.00. On the 02-JAN-2018 I reiterated my Point to get out andsaid '' I am no longer bullish bitcoin, in fact, I am bearish'' Atthis point in time, I met Folks on these Streets who would pull outtheir Computer and show me how they were making money every second[Look at that they would say and indeed There was a number and it wasticking higher] mining BITCOIN. The recent cryptocurrency marketdecline has resulted in a similar drop in mining profitability andforced Chinese operators to sell their mining devices at a loss. Somemining machines are being sold on the second-hand market for merely 5percent of their original value. Others would tell me, I've boughtNvidia. Crypto at this point was at Peak Phenomenon.

As I write this BITCOIN is trading at $3,650.00. I think its goingright back to levels below $1,000.00.

We have yet to hit peak melt-down. The reason being so many Folksespouse the HODL philosophy.

GameKyuubi posted "I AM HODLING," a drunk, semi-coherent, typo-ladenrant about his poor trading skills and determination to simply holdhis bitcoin from that point on. "I type d that tyitle twice because Iknew it was wrong the first time. Still wrong. w/e," he wrote inreference to the now-famous misspelling of "holding." "WHY AM IHOLDING? I'LL TELL YOU WHY," he continued. "It's because I'm a badtrader and I KNOW I'M A BAD TRADER. Yeah you good traders can spotthe highs and the lows pit pat piffy wing wong wang just like that andmake a millino bucks sure no problem bro."

He concluded that the best course was to hold, since "You only sell ina bear market if you are a good day trader or an illusioned noob. Thepeople inbetween hold. In a zero-sum game such as this, traders canonly take your money if you sell." He then confessed he'd had somewhiskey and briefly mused about the spelling of whisk(e)y. [HODLDefinition | Investopedia]

“But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably.It is theparabola. They must have guessed, once or twice -guessed and refusedto believe- that everything, always, collectively, had been movingtoward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of nosurprise, no second chance, no return.’’

Let me leave you with Hunter S. Thompson, “Life should not be ajourney to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a prettyand well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud ofsmoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming“Wow! What a Ride!”

The proximity of the beginning of the bear market in Crude Oil and thedisappearance of Khashoggi is no coincidence. The Sell-Off was'manufactured'' by the Crown Prince and was his response and anattempt to release some of the Pressure from the [geopolitical]Pressure Cooker.

Lee Buchheit, a senior partner at law firm Cleary Gottlieb, has beenbrought on board to advise a clutch of London-based funds who areowners of unpaid debt that has been racking up interest since the1980s. His reputation for antipathy towards so-called vulture fundshas made him a key pick for clients keen to signal that they areseeking a fair deal.Sudan has spent more than two decades in the geopolitical wilderness.Frozen out of global capital markets by US sanctions, the governmenthas missed out on booming demand for African sovereign bonds in thepast 10 years. Its presence on a US list of state sponsors ofterrorism alongside Iran, Iraq, Syria and North Korea has added to thefinancial pain, disqualifying Sudan from potential debt relief.As the country’s relations with the US begin to thaw, Mr Buchheithopes Sudan will be able to borrow from international capital marketsonce more, but says the government must first deal with its old debts.“One of the things [Sudan] will have to do first is clear the Augeanstables of these old claims,” he told the Financial Times.The US government lifted its 20-year-old sanctions on Sudan last year,following improved co-operation on counter-terrorism and other USpriorities. Last month, the two countries agreed to begin negotiationsto remove Sudan from the US terror list, in what should be the finalstep in Sudan’s geopolitical rehabilitation.If Sudan can reach an HIPC deal between its government andmultilateral lenders, which hold the bulk of its external debt, it canthen pursue a similar restructuring with its private creditors. Anydeal with private creditors could see the latter group — oftenreferred to as the “London club” — take as much as a 90 per cent writedown on its claims.The creditor group represented by Cleary wants the amount of debt thenleft to be converted into a bond, so that it can more easily be tradedand sold on to other investors.“That’s what I believe will happen,” said Cleary’s Mr Buchheit. “Nowif you ask me when it will happen, well that depends very much on thepolitics and the extent of your belief in the efficacy of prayer.”If successful, the hedge funds believe the negotiations will unlock aglobal debt-relief agreement that has stalled for decades, clearingthe way for them to make a return on their investment. The funds holdmore than a third of a SFr1.6bn ($1.6bn) bank loan, which they say hasballooned to about SFr8bn due to decades of unpaid interest.A record $8.9bn fine the US levied on French bank BNP Paribas in 2014over prohibited transactions with Sudan and other regimes — describedby some as ‘sanctions 2.0’ — had a chilling effect on banking activityin the region. Just last month, Société Générale agreed to pay USauthorities more than $1.3bn to resolve a case involving the handlingof dollar transactions in sanctioned countries including Sudan.

The global population is forecast to reach 9.9 billion by 2050 – a 29%increase – with most of that growth in Africa, where the population isexpected to double to 2.6 billionIn an interview with the Guardian, he said: “If today Europe isstruggling with economic migration [driven by poverty], can youimagine the extent of migration 10 years down the road with theAfrican population set to double?”“It’s very simple,” said Houngbo. “If we do not take decisive actionnow, expect migration levels to double both within Africa and toEurope. That projection makes me very concerned and European nationsand UN member states should be thinking about investing in ruraltransformation.”The former prime minister of Togo added: “For three years in a row,the state of food security and nutrition report shows that the levelof food insecurity and malnutrition has been going up after decades ofdecreasing.“That is why we need to look at the bigger picture – the prioritiesare decent schools, potable water and basic healthcare. I alsoconsider access to WhatsApp to be a basic service. Young people needaccess to modern technology.”He said developing renewable energy would also be a consideration assome local grids are not up to the job. “If you cannot charge yourcellphone or laptop, it’s difficult to do business.”Smallholder farms produce 50% of all food calories on 30% of theworld’s agricultural land. In sub-Saharan Africa, 80% of all farms aresmall-scale. Their productivity varies but they are generallycharacterised by growing subsistence crops and one or two cash cropson a small plot and relying almost exclusively on family labour, withwomen playing a vital role.

Not long ago, Chinese engineers were putting the finishing touches totwo expensive rail projects in east Africa, one linking Djibouti onthe Red Sea to landlocked Ethiopia and the other running from theKenyan port of Mombasa to the capital, Nairobi.But less than 18 months after both lines were inaugurated withgrandiose talk of Chinese-led east African integration, doubts areemerging about their economic viability. The $4.5bn Djibouti-AddisAbaba line, the first fully electrified cross-border railway inAfrica, has run into financial and operational difficulties, while the$3.2bn Kenya route is losing money and has been plagued by scandal.Push-back over the viability of these and other projects is driving achange in Beijing’s approach to investment in Africa. After nearly 20years of pouring money into infrastructure projects across thecontinent, China’s president Xi Jinping said in September that “vanityprojects” must be shunned in favour of more carefully conceivedinitiatives that address proven economic bottlenecks.The following month The People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist party’smouthpiece, warned that Beijing should “pay more attention to howprojects connect with the development and basic interests of relevantcountries”.Railways in east Africa have a long history of problems. The originalMombasa-Nairobi line, built by the British in the late 19th century,was so costly in both money and lives that it became known as the“Lunatic Express”.Beijing’s reputation is not all that is at stake: Chinese sponsors arelosing money. Wang Wen, chief economist at Sinosure, said the Chinesestate-owned insurer had been forced to write off $1bn in losses on theDjibouti-Addis Ababa link. Due diligence on the 718km railway had been“downright inadequate”, he said.We knew from the very beginning that [the Mombasa-Nairobi line] was alemon of a project and it is simply becoming more and more apparentevery dayMr Wen’s comments came after Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, inSeptember negotiated easier terms with China on $4bn of railway loans,extending the repayment period from 10 to 30 years. The move followeda foreign exchange crisis that hit Ethiopia’s ability to maintain therailroad and repay its debts to Chinese state creditors, analystssaid.Meanwhile, criticism of the Mombasa-Nairobi line, Kenya’s biggestinfrastructure project since it gained independence in 1963, hasincreased. Three Chinese nationals working for the China Road andBridge Corporation were last month charged in Kenya with attempting tobribe local officials investigating an alleged ticketing scam that wassaid to be depriving the railway of $10,000 a day in revenue.The rail line had failed to achieve its goal of cutting congestion onthe parallel highway by shifting freight from trucks to trains, saidJohn Githongo, a Kenyan anti-corruption campaigner. The highway was asbusy as ever, he added. Bechtel, a US construction company, evenplanned to build a new $3bn road along the same route, he said.“We knew from the very beginning that this was a lemon of a projectand it is simply becoming more and more apparent every day,” MrGithongo said.Beijing in September signalled its concern about the economic case forthe line, turning down a request to fund an extension towards theUgandan border until a full feasibility study had been conducted.China has for years prioritised infrastructure in Africa, buildingroads, bridges, airports and power stations, from Ghana to Mozambique,for governments keen to emulate the formula that helped kick-start itsown rapid development from the 1980s. While the west has long stressedgovernance and institution-building as engines of development, Beijinghas advocated big projects with the potential to link markets, raiseproductivity and spur industrialisation.However, as in China itself, some have turned out to be whiteelephants, while others have failed to generate enough return toservice the original loans used to fund them.The Djibouti-Addis line, for example, has been crippled by electricityshortages and lower-than-expected use. “While its passenger capacityhas been growing, on the freight side the uptake of the railway byindustrial manufacturers and exporters has been very lacklustre,” saidYunnan Chen, a researcher at the China Africa Research Initiative atJohns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.The railway’s prospects have dimmed further with the signing of apeace deal in July between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which gives Ethiopiaaccess to the Eritrean ports of Assab and Masawa. When the line wasoriginally conceived, it was intended to connect Ethiopia with theport of Djibouti, at that time its sole access to the sea.Hallelujah Lulie, a regional analyst based in Addis Ababa, concededthat the line was not “fully operational” and that there were“definitely some reservations”. But, he said, in spite of teethingproblems, the railway — which links Ethiopia’s industrial free-tradezones and large-scale farming projects to export markets — madelong-term economic sense. “It’s going to be a vital lifeline for theeconomy,” he added. “It has issues, but I don’t think there are strongreservations about the project itself.”China is not the first “big imperium” having difficulty trying tobuild a railway in Kenya, said Mr Githongo. “But the difficulty is notso much for the Chinese. It is for the poor Kenyans who will have topay the money back.”

Matthew Harrington, US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Africa, says@MthuliNcube’s budget is “positive and will make an impact”, but theUS is still far off from ending sanctions, or providing debt relief ornew credit until Zimbabwe turns rhetoric into action.

Dollars are hard to find in tiny, troubled Burundi -- but three nearbyAfrican nations and plenty of used Land Cruisers and Range Roversoffer some entrepreneurs a solution.Buying vehicles from cash-strapped owners and selling them in Rwandaand the Democratic Republic of Congo is an increasingly popular ployin the East African country, which is trying to emerge from threeyears of political upheaval. Along with cross-border sales ofbeverages, furniture and fittings, it’s a way to beat foreign-currencyshortages spurred by declines in investment and spats with Westerndonors.“To continue my business, by hook or by crook I need to get dollars,”says Ali Hassan, who sells two vehicles a week, making $1,000 profit amonth and hard currency to buy spare parts from Dubai for his mechanicworkshop. “Banks don’t serve us, so I thought selling things like usedcars could be a good deal.”Such workarounds signal the difficulties still faced by Burundi, alandlocked nation of about 11 million people where violence sparked bya dispute over presidential terms that began in April 2015 has claimedhundreds of lives and forced thousands to flee, many to its otherneighbor, Tanzania.The economy, already the region’s smallest, contracted 4 percent in2015, according to the International Monetary Fund. Though thegovernment is touting a coffee- and mining-led resurgence over thenext decade, the IMF says 2018 growth may be just 0.1 percent.The Brussels-based International Crisis Group warned in August thatworsening unemployment and poverty “increase the likelihood ofinstability and exacerbate the risk of violence.”Central bank officials say currency shortages have stopped someforeign companies from repatriating profits. But they insist thesituation will improve, with inflows that slowed when the EuropeanUnion suspended direct aid to the government being replaced with theproceeds from rising coffee and tea output, and payments to Burundiantroops serving with a peacekeeping mission in Somalia.The bank’s governor, Jean Ciza, has said Burundi needs to revive othertypes of agriculture, livestock-raising and manufacturing that produceexports while creating jobs.In the meantime, people like Jeannette Nduwumusi, a shopkeeper in thecapital, Bujumbura, have quickly become experts on the used-carmarkets in Burundi’s neighbors. Rwanda, one of Africa’sfastest-growing economies, has a taste for saloon cars, while buyersin the rugged, mineral-rich Congo need off-road-friendly vehicles suchas Range Rovers and Toyota’s Land Cruisers.Nduwumusi and her husband trawl Facebook and WhatsApp groups to findvehicles for sale locally, buy in Burundian francs and drive themcross-border to sell where dollars are in greater supply. “We sufferbecause of political problems, but we are not ready to give up,” shesaid of her business difficulties.They’re competing with Eric Nzisabira, whose car spare-parts businesshad ground to a halt by 2016, and who’s also seeking automobilebargains. He says he took inspiration from his father, who sold itemsto Tanzania in the 1990s to overcome the economic effects of aregional embargo imposed on Burundi for a military coup during itscivil war.Cars are the big earners, but other Burundians have stepped up resalesof locally made bottled beers and sodas or are offering householditems.Since 2016, Said Hassan has built a joinery business with sales ofmetal door- and window frames to Congo. Each cross-border sale getshim dollars he partly uses to import materials to build the nextconsignment.“My income can be about $5,000, but I don’t get that every month,” he said.

Diane Rwigara, a critic of veteran Rwandan president Paul Kagame, wasacquitted by Rwanda’s high court on Thursday of charges that includedinciting insurrection and forging of documents.The 37-year-old accountant has repeatedly accused Kagame of stiflingdissent and criticised his Rwandan Patriotic Front’s unyielding gripon power since it assumed control after ending the country’s 1994genocide.Her attempt to stand against Kagame in the country’s last presidentialpoll in August last year was blocked after she was accused of notsubmitting enough supporters’ signatures and that some of those shesubmitted were forged.“Court rules that Diane Rwigara is innocent,” Xavier Ndahayo, one of apanel of three judges, told a packed courtroom in the capital Kigali.

Twelve months into Uhuru’s second term, Kenyans are taking stock, andtaking aim at the failures in the anti-corruption campaignCommentators and pundits have been giving their verdicts on the firstyear of President Uhuru Kenyatta's second term of office since theanniversary fell on 28 November.There is satisfaction at the internal peace brought by the burial ofthe hatchet with opposition leader Raila Odinga in March, butdisappointment in the gap between lofty pronouncements and action onthe ground, especially over corruption.

Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) is majority-owned by the Kenyattafamily while the Nairobi Securities Exchange- listed NIC Group ispartly owned by the billionaire businessman James Ndegwa’s family.If successful, the planned merger of the midsized NIC Bank and thetier one CBA Bank would create one of the largest financial servicesgroups in the region.“It is the view of the two boards that the potential merger wouldbring together the best in class retail and corporate banks withstrong potential for growth in all aspects of banking and wealthmanagement,” they said.“A combined entity would create a complementary base of over 38million customers, a strong digital proposition and a robust corporateand asset finance offering.”